Page 71 of My Cowboy Trouble
Pepper nudges Kenzie again, more insistently. "Okay, okay, I get the message, hungry girl. I get it. Breakfast time." Kenzie laughs shakily, pulling away to grab the feed bucket. "You're as demanding as the boys."
"We're not demanding. We're assertive."
"You're something, all right."
As she feeds Pepper, I watch her and realize this is it—this is what I want. Not just the sex, though that's fantastic. Not just the banter, though I live for our verbal sparring. But this: quiet mornings in the barn, comfortable silence, the easy intimacy of shared space, the way she fits into our lives like she was always meant to be here.
I want Kenzie Rhodes to stay.
And that terrifies me more than anything has in years.
We're sittingon the fence watching the sun climb higher, sharing coffee from a thermos she brought. It's still terrible ranch coffee, but somehow it tastes a little better when I'm drinking it with her. The morning is warming up, promising another scorching day, but right now it's perfect—cool enough to be comfortable, warm enough to appreciate the sun.
"This is nice," she says, leaning against me slightly. "Peaceful."
"Don't let Gavin hear you say that. He'll take it as a challenge to make things chaotic."
"Gavin makes everything chaotic. It's his superpower."
"What's mine?"
She considers this, taking another sip of coffee. "You make people feel safe while simultaneously making them question everything they thought they knew about themselves."
"That's very specific."
"That's very you." She turns to look at me. "How did you really end up here?"
"I told you. Trent's dad took me in."
"That's the ending. What's the beginning? What's the middle? What's the story you don't tell people?"
I consider lying, giving her the sanitized version I usually tell. The one where I'm just another hard-luck kid who caught a break. But something about the morning, about her presence, about the way she'slooking at me like I matter, like my story matters, makes me tell the truth.
"My mom died when I was eight. Overdose. Heroin, they think, though the coroner said there was a whole cocktail of shit in her system." The words come out flat, practiced, like I'm reading from a report. Because that's how I learned them—from a report I stole from my social worker when I was twelve.
"Jesus, Asher."
"They found me trying to make her wake up for three days before a neighbor called it in. I'd been bringing her water, talking to her, telling her about the cartoons I was watching. I thought she was just sleeping really hard."
Kenzie's hand finds mine, squeezing tight.
"Foster care after that. Twelve homes in seven years."
"Twelve?"
"I became a difficult kid. Too smart for my own good, too angry at the world, too broken to let anyone fix me. I'd get comfortable somewhere and then do something to get myself moved. Break things. Start fights. Run away. Self-sabotage, the therapists called it. I called it getting out before they could throw me out."
"That must have been lonely."
"It was survival. Don't get attached, don't get hurt. Simple math." I laugh, but it's bitter. "Except kids aren't supposed to think like that. Normal kids believe insecond chances and happy endings and families that actually want them."
She doesn't say anything, just squeezes my hand tighter. Her thumb traces circles on my palm, grounding me in the present instead of the past.
"The last family was actually decent. The Johnsons. Mark and Linda. They had two biological kids and me. Treated me the same as their own, even when I was an absolute shit to them. They wanted to adopt me, but I was fifteen and convinced I knew everything. Convinced they'd eventually see what everyone else saw—that I was too damaged, too much work, not worth the effort."
"What did you do?"
"Ran away. Stole Mark’s truck and two hundred dollars from Linda's purse. Made it all the way here before the truck died. Trent's dad found me sleeping in this barn, half frozen and too proud to admit I was scared."
